My family has had quite the adventure this last week.

• Slightly longer than a week, but I may have stumbled upon a solution for my eczema.
• My 23-year-old son had a breakdown and I had to fly out to Arizona to pick him up and bring him home and try and get local services set up for him.
• My parents, both of whom have different levels of dementia, are in the process of moving from their large country home into a suburban setting for seniors with a graduated levels of care.
• I am more motivated than ever to find a way to retire from my full=time job that is keeping me from doing the important things like caring for my family and myself.

Each of these is enough for an entry (or two all by themselves) but I will start with the first and work my way down.

I have gone more than a year or suffering with patches of eczema all over my arms and legs with minimal improvement and three doctors just telling me they don’t know what causes it but dry skin just needs “lots of moisture”. The steroid creams and steroid pills they provided did almost nothing to help the problem other than slow it down a little and make me crazy.

They would tell me that dry air makes it worse but would not listen when I told them that sweating and heat made it much worse for me and I live in coastal Virginia gosh darn it! It’s HUMID here. All the time. Mine gets better when I’m cool and dry~not hot, moist and sweating.

I also noted that my abdomen has been very bloated and swollen and hard to the touch over my liver and it’s been that way for some time. And my body odor has gotten down right offensive — even to me. And when I’m really really hot my ankles and hands swell up.

My family doctor tells me my “liver levels” are a little elevated but other than that, (and being 100 pounds over weight), the eczema and bad knees, I’m pretty healthy. My blood pressure is low, my cholesterol and sugar is perfect (I mean really perfect) and my heart rate is very good (around 70).

But my skin has been telling me otherwise. And frankly, I think I just didn’t want to figure it out. I like my alcoholic beverages. I don’t want to have a liver problem. Besides, I had quite drinking for two months last Fall and my skin did not get better.

What I did not do was address ways to support the liver. Until I finally got a really bad expansion of the eczema and even my husband began to be repulsed. So I finally accepted this has to be something with the liver.

So, I went back to the non-alcoholic beverages and started trying to cope with stress by increasing my use of calming oils. I increased my dosage of Long Living Vitality to a full half dose instead of a quarter dose. I also added Mitro2Max. I added it to help with my energy levels and to help decrease the brain fuzz. I started drinking more water. The eczema seemed to slow.

I added back in one of the more effective steroid creams the doctors had given me and put it on twice daily (morning and night) for 10 days and topped it off with the best moisturizing lotions/creams/ointments I could find. When skin cracked open (which did frequently), I used the doTerra CorrectX ointment and it helped ease the pain and the open wounds seemed to repair more quickly.

When the doTerra Greens came out I was lucky enough to snag one before they sold out and began making smoothies for my breakfast every morning: I also have greatly reduced my consumption of cow milk. So my smoothie is 1/2 of a frozen banana, 1 cup of another frozen fruit, 1 scoop of doTerra Vegan Vanilla shake, 1 scoop of doTerra greens, 1 tablespoon of Vitamin C powder, two tablespoons of collagen powder, 1 cup of goat milk or rice milk, 4 ice cubes, and 1 cup of apple or cranberry juice. Blend until thick.

But the biggest improvements started three weeks ago when I started dripping and rubbing three to four drops each of Rosemary oil, Cypress oil and Frankincense across my liver every morning and night. I layer the oils and only wait long enough to close a bottle and open the next before adding the next layer. Within days the eczema patches began to recede. I will keep cuts and wounds for months and scars on my are just a road map over my body so I was amazed at how these things just smoothed out and began to fade.

In addition, the hard lump of my abdomen began to soften. I can lay on my tummy and not have pain. My liver has either given up the ghost completely and just quick fighting or it’s returning to something more normal. My fingertips are still hard and cracking but my hands are slowly getting better; everything else is soft, pliable and other than scarring, looks and feels normal.

I haven’t lost much weight yet: moved from 242 to 239. But it’s a start. I’m hoping over the next few weeks/months things continue to improve. But for now the skin is better!